Authorities appear to be giving no quarter in their case against file-sharing website Megaupload. A New Zealand judge denied bail to the website's founder, Kim Dotcom, on Wednesday. Authorities in the Netherlands also arrested a fifth suspect in the case.
Multiple news reports have identified the latest arrestee as programmer Andrus Nomm, a 32-year-old Estonian citizen.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) last week charged Dotcom and six others with running Megaupload as a "massive worldwide online piracy" operation. American authorities have been able to lead the charge because Megaupload was run in part from servers in the United States. The DOJ accuses Megaupload's operators of enabling the illegal downloads of millions of films, music, TV shows, software and other content to earn more than $175 million for themselves while costing more than $500 million in damages to copyright holders.
The first wave of arrests of Dotcom and three other alleged accomplices came last week, days after major websites including Wikipedia and Google blacked-out all or parts of their content in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Soon after the arrests, the hacker group Anonymous claimed credit for attacks that temporarily disabled the DOJ website.
Dotcom was denied bail on Wednesday pending his first extradition hearing on Feb. 22 because he is believed to pose a flight risk. Prosecutors said that has access to large monetary funds and a history of avoiding criminal charges.
Dotcom was arrested after authorities forced him out of a safe-room in his New Zealand mansion.
Born in Germany as Kim Schmitz, Dotcom has led an extravagant life as an Internet rogue, according to widespread news reports.
He was accused of a major insider-trading case in Germany at the peak of the Internet boom in 2001. He fled the country but was arrested in Thailand, then extradited and convicted in Germany, where he spent five months in jail after appearing on a popular late-night talk show to publicly defend himself, according to The New York Times.
Multiple photos posted online show him with beautiful women, jetliners and fancy automobiles while decked out in his trademark sunglasses and black garb. He flew helicopters and paid for the city of Aukland's 2010 New Year's fireworks celebration, according to the Wall Street Journal. Authorities reportedly seized more than a dozen luxury cars when they arrested him last week.
What do you think? Is Kim Dotcom up the creek without a paddle? Or can he wiggle out of this? Let us know in the comments.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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